Showing results by publisher "Recorded Books" in Psychological

We've all been there. A loved one or a dear friend becomes desperately ill or is tragically injured. Someone - maybe even you - says, "If that ever happens to me, I wish someone would just . . . kill me." What if you could choose when to die? But once you decide, you can't change your mind - ever. Welcome to the next step in the evolution of suspense fiction, an in-your-face/what-would-you-do topical thriller.

New York City, 1968: The customers at Café Marie don’t come just for the excellent coffee and pastries. They come for the sophisticated ambiance, and the illusion of being somewhere other than a bustling, exhausting city. Headwaiter Charles Ward helps create that illusion through impeccable service—unobtrusive, nearly invisible, yet always watchful.

Two reading groups, unofficially called Love and Anti-Love, falter amidst political friction and signs of environmental collapse. Participation offers a prescient look at communication in a time of rupture: anonymous participants exchange fantasies and ruminations, and relationships develop and unravel. As the groups consider—or neglect—their syllabi, and connections between members deepen, a mentor disappears, a translator questions his role, a colleague known as “the capitalist” becomes a point of fixation, and “the news reports” filter through in fragments.

Charlotte Anne Mattas longs to turn back the clock. Before her husband, Sam, went to serve his country in the war, he was the man everyone could rely on—responsible, intelligent, and loving. But the person who's come back to their family farm is very different from the protector Annie remembers. Sam's experience in the Pacific theater has left him broken in ways no one can understand—but that everyone is learning to fear.

It's summer when Arezu, an Iranian American teenager, goes to Spain to meet her estranged father at an apartment he owns there. He never shows up, instead sending her a weekly allowance, care of his step-nephew, Omar, a 40-year-old Lebanese man. As the weeks progress, Arezu is drawn into a mercurial, charged, and ultimately catastrophic affair with Omar, a relationship that shatters her just at the cusp of adulthood. Two decades later, Arezu inherits the apartment.

Kathi Ellison is an English literature major at the University of California in Berkeley, living with her boyfriend off-campus. She is also the daughter of a candidate for the US Senate and his wife, a role that could affect her life should her father win the election. But before she can consider her future, Kathi must first come to terms with her past. A car accident when she was four years old killed her mother and left her in a coma for several days. The migraines and nightmares that plagued her as a child have recently returned with a vengeance.

Fuminori Nakamura's Akutagawa Prize-winner plunges us into the depths of a young man's winding, troubled psyche. An unnamed taxi driver in Tokyo has experienced a rupture in his everyday life. He cannot stop daydreaming of suicide, envisioning himself returning to the earth in what soon become terrifying blackout episodes. His live-in girlfriend, Sayuko, is in a similarly bad phase, surrendering to alcoholism to escape the memory of her miscarriage.

With this fifth pulse-pounding entry in his Christy Award-winning series, best-selling author Steven James explores the rippling effects of life’s everyday choices. While investigating a double homicide in an isolated Wisconsin town, Special Agent Patrick Bowers uncovers a high-tech conspiracy that twists through long-buried Cold War secrets and targets present-day tensions in the Middle East.

Ruth Galm's spare, poetic debut novel, set in the American West of early Joan Didion, traces the drifting path of a young woman as she skirts the law and her own oppressive anxiety. Into the Valley opens on the day in July 1967 when B. decides to pass her first counterfeit check and flees San Francisco for the Central Valley.

Michael Hart had been convicted for killing his wife and spent 10 years in prison. But now he has escaped, and his lawyer is tracking down new evidence that might clear him. But then the sleepwalking begins.... And one by one, the members of the jury that convicted him are being murdered.

Prescription DEATH. Eight attractive, talented people, each tottering on the razor's edge of sanity. Now their psychiatrist, Dr. Elias, is dying from a ravaging cancer, and he has made his cold final judgment. Those he can't cure, he must kill.

Joy, a work of both romance and tragedy, is bound together by the unshakable faith of its protagonist. Anya Mitchell seems to have it all - a profitable financial services business, a handsome fiance, and an expensive diamond ring. But there are unwelcome doubts lingering in her mind. Danger also looms on the horizon, as a stalker lurking at the edge of her life draws closer.

In a trance-like state, Albert walks - from Bordeaux to Poitiers, from Chaumont to Macon, and farther afield to Turkey, Austria, Russia - all over Europe. When he walks, he is called a vagrant, a mad man. He is chased out of towns and villages, ridiculed and imprisoned. When the reverie of his walking ends, he's left wondering where he is, with no memory of how he got there. His past exists only in fleeting images.

When Kristin Stevens loses her administrative job in California' s university system, she and her husband, Cal, relocate to Massachusetts. Kristin takes a position at a smaller, less prestigious college outside Boston and promptly becomes entangled in its delicate, overheated politics. Cal, whose musical talent is nothing more than a consuming avocation, spends his days alone, fixing up their new home. And as they settle into their early fifties, the two seem to exist in separate spheres entirely.

Charlie Bellerose leads a seminomadic existence, traveling widely to manage the language academies he has established in different countries. After separating, somewhat amicably, from his wife, he moves from Madrid back to his native Canada to set up a new school, and for the first time he forges a meaningful relationship with his brother, who's going through a vicious divorce.

Ha Jin displays his impressive storytelling gifts in this richly textured examination of contemporary China in 1989. Professor Yang, a respected literature scholar, suffers a stroke and is confined to a hospital bed. Now Jian Wan, Yang’s brightest student and future son-in-law, must suspend his rigorous studies to care for his mentor. Jian dutifully keeps watch as Yang begins raving madly, often pleading with unseen tormentors. Has Yang lost his grip on sanity, or is he no longer capable of hiding deeply buried, painful secrets?

When Filthy White Guy buys about a hundred burritos and blows up the microwave of the convenience store where Paris Scott has been working for 30 long nights, Paris decides his life couldn't be more of a mess. But when he gives Filthy White Guy a ride home to a Bel Air mansion, things really start to explode.

While John Deal is busy with his thriving construction business, he is shocked to learn that his closest friend, Barbara, is dead. Although the police tag it as suicide, Deal is suspicious. And when Barbara’s sister, a beautiful film star, disappears, he is driven to find the relationship between the two cases. The link is one that will put Deal in the midst of Chinese gangsters and piles of tainted cash.

Having justly earned her reputation as a master storyteller, Lee Smith's name evokes images of authentic country folk struggling through life's arduous tests. Saving Grace adds a stunning spiritual dimension. The daughter of a preacher who ignores his destitute family, Florida Grace doesn't think much of Jesus. He's the reason she's lived in squalor and He wasn't there for her through her failed marriage. But in one shining moment He calls out to her and she returns to her roots to heed His call.

Spur Award winner Robert Flynn captures the authentic texture of Texas in this compelling novel about family ties and life’s toughest lessons. Chance Carter doesn’t like his grandmother, so when he learns her health is failing, he thinks only of his status as the sole heir to her million dollar ranch. Yet when he pays her a visit, he learns surprising truths about his past that force him to reconsider everything he knows.